42 | JANUARY 27 • 2022 

W

illiam Ury, found-
er of the Harvard 
Program of 
Negotiation, tells a marvelous 
story in one of his books. A 
young American, living in Japan 
to study aikido, 
was sitting one 
afternoon in a 
train in the sub-
urbs of Tokyo. 
The carriage was 
half empty. There 
were some moth-
ers with children 
and elderly people 
going shopping.
Then, at one of the stations, 
the doors opened, and a man 
staggered into the carriage, 
shouting, drunk, dirty and 
aggressive. He started cursing 
the people and lunged at a 
woman holding a baby. The 
blow hit her and sent her into 
the lap of an elderly couple. 
They jumped up and ran to the 
other end of the carriage. This 
angered the drunk, who went 
after them, grabbing a metal 
pole and trying to wrench it out 
of its socket. It was a dangerous 
situation, and the young student 
readied himself for a fight.
Before he could do so, how-
ever, a small, elderly man in 
his 70s, dressed in a kimono, 
shouted “Hey” to the drunk in 
a friendly manner. “Come here 

and talk to me.
” The drunk 
came over, as if in a trance. 
“Why should I talk to you?” 
he said. “What have you been 
drinking?” asked the old man. 
“Sake,
” he said, “and it’s none of 
your business!”
“Oh, that’s wonderful,
” said 
the old man. “You see, I love 
sake, too. Every night, me and 
my wife (she’s 76, you know), we 
warm up a little bottle of sake 
and take it out into the garden 
and we sit on an old wooden 
bench. We watch the sun go 
down, and we look to see how 
our persimmon tree is doing. 
My great-grandfather planted 
that tree …
”
As he continued talking, 
gradually the drunk’s face began 
to soften and his fists slowly 
unclenched. “Yes,
” he said, “I 
love persimmons, too.
” “
And I’m 
sure,
” said the old man, smiling, 
“you have a wonderful wife.
”
“No,
” replied the drunk. “My 
wife died.
” Gently, he began to 
sob. “I don’t got no wife. I don’t 
got no home. I don’t got no job. 
I’m so ashamed of myself.
” Tears 
rolled down his cheeks.
As the train arrived at the 
student’s stop and he was leav-
ing the train, he heard the old 
man sighing sympathetically, 
“My, my. This is a difficult pre-
dicament indeed. Sit down here 
and tell me about it.
” In the last 

glimpse he saw of them, the 
drunk was sitting with his head 
in the old man’s lap. The man 
was softly stroking his hair.
What he had sought to 
achieve by muscle, the old man 
had achieved with kind words.

SEEING THROUGH 
SOMEONE ELSE’S EYES
A story like this illustrates the 
power of empathy, of seeing the 
world through someone else’s 
eyes, entering into their feelings 
and of acting in such a way as 
to let them know that they are 
understood, that they are heard, 
that they matter.
If there is one command 
above all others that speaks of 
the power and significance of 
empathy it is the line in this 
week’s parshah: “You shall not 
oppress a stranger, for you know 
the heart of a stranger: You were 
strangers in the land of Egypt” 
(Ex. 23:9).
Why this command? The 
need for empathy surely extends 
way beyond strangers. It applies 
to marriage partners, parents 
and children, neighbors, col-
leagues at work and so on. 
Empathy is essential to human 
interaction generally. Why then 
invoke it specifically about 
strangers?
The answer is that “empathy 
is strongest in groups where 

people identify with each other: 
family, friends, clubs, gangs, reli-
gions or races.
”
The corollary to this is that 
the stronger the bond within the 
group, the sharper the suspicion 
and fear of those outside the 
group. It is easy to “love your 
neighbor as yourself.
” It is very 
hard indeed to love, or even feel 
empathy for, a stranger. As pri-
matologist Frans de Waal puts it, 
“We’ve evolved to hate our ene-
mies, to ignore people we barely 
know and to distrust anybody 
who doesn’t look like us. Even if 
we are largely cooperative with-
in our communities, we become 
almost a different animal in our 
treatment of strangers.
”
Fear of the one-not-like-us is 
capable of disabling the empathy 
response. That is why this spe-
cific command is so life-chang-
ing. Not only does it tell us to 
empathize with the stranger 
because you know what it feels 
like to be in his or her place, 
it even hints that this was part 
of the purpose of the Israelites’ 
exile in Egypt in the first place. 
It is as if God had said, your 
sufferings have taught you 
something of immense impor-
tance. You have been oppressed; 
therefore, come to the rescue of 
the oppressed, whoever they are. 
You have suffered; therefore, you 
shall become the people who are 

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

TOA HEFTIBA ON UNSPLASH

The Power of Empathy

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

